Ofo, a strange name for a bicycle sharing company, has come up with a way to locate a nearby rental bicycle on a street corner near you using your smartphone.

After downloading the Ofo app, you can find the yellow Ofo bike nearest you on the map. The app will give you walking directions — if you need them.

Once you find the bicycle, you tap “unlock” on your phone and the bike’s locking device peels open like a reverse Venus flytrap. You scan the QR code on the bike and your time begins.

A ride on an Ofo bicycle costs $1 an hour. There are no clubs to join, no incentives, no sales and no monthly membership fees. And most importantly, no docking stations.

Unlike the Metro Bike Share stations you see around Pasadena, downtown Los Angeles and Venice, Ofo’s bicycles are parked in safe, legal spaces anywhere, with no docks or stations. The self-locking system on each bike keeps them from disappearing unlawfully.

So if you ride say, to the grocery store and back, you don’t need to find a docking station to park it. You just lock it and park it somewhere safe — and legal. This way, you don’t have to ride extra miles to a docking station to return your bicycle and walk home. Just lock it and leave it in a legal space.

Unlike ride-hailing, you go to your ride instead of your ride coming to you. And unlike a car, you provide the power. Pollution free. I guess it’s more like Uber-with-exercise.

By the end of March, Ofo will be operating in Pico Rivera with about 200 bikes, having signed a deal with the city last week. The Chinese-based company recently ventured into Southern California. In January, they added a few hundred bikes around Bellflower, near Long Beach.

When data showed people often ended their rides in Pico Rivera, the company sought out the blue-collar city to start a bike program there. It expects to be open for business there by the end of March.

“We are really data focused. We want to be able to focus our service on where the demand is,” Chandra Morando, Ofo regional general manager, said.

The dockless bike company has a specific business model. “We are trying to serve areas where Metro is currently not serving. There are areas underserved by public transit,” she said.

The operation is physical as well as psychological. You can’t just leave bikes anywhere, can you?

Morando said Pico Rivera will be striping some spaces for the bikes and putting up signs. But the customer doesn’t have to leave them in a striped space. They must leave them, however, away from cars and pedestrians, she said.

“They can be left anywhere, as long as they are parked not blocking the public right of way,” she said. “Anyone who needs a bike can get one, anywhere, anytime.” They are like the Starbucks of bikes.

And like Starbucks and its green goddess lady logo, seeing the bright, yellow bikes around town will get you thinking. Maybe for that short trip, like going to the grocery store to buy milk or bread, I can ride a bike instead of taking the car. (The Ofo bike is equipped with a front basket).

Ofo only has been in existence since 2014. Yet it has considerable experience. It operates in 250 cities and 20 countries. It’s big in Beijing and in European cities, including Paris, she said. But can biking like they do in Europe and Asia really catch on here in car-centric America?

“I see that changing and changing quickly,” she said. “As people become more in-tune with the effects of climate change, they may start thinking: ‘Can I walk or bike there?’ That should be my first option.”

Steve Scauzillo covers transportation and the environment for the Southern California News Group and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing from The Wilderness Society. Reach him via email him at sscauzillo@scng.com or @stevscaz on Twitter and Instagram.

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.